Couple scoop $128m lottery after ticket error

A CENTRAL Kentucky autoworker is lucky he held on to the $128.6 million (€89.7m) Powerball ticket he bought on Christmas Eve during some last-minute shopping – after all, it was printed by mistake.

The Andersons said they didn’t initially believe they had won the jackpot after buying lottery tickets together for 12 years.

“We didn’t hit it, that’s not us,” Rob Anderson said he told his wife after showing her the winning ticket the morning after the December 26 drawing. “Something’s not right.”

Rob Anderson, 39, said the winning ticket was a misprint that he decided to keep while buying stocking fillers at a Georgetown gas station. He wanted to buy $1 lottery tickets for three people, but the clerk made a mistake.

“The clerk ran the $3 Quick Pick but he put it all on one ticket, and I was like, doggone it, I needed three separate tickets,” Anderson said.

The clerk asked him if he wanted to keep the ticket, which had three sets of random numbers.

“Yeah, I got a couple extra dollars,” Anderson said, and he bought three more tickets to give as gifts.

When he arrived home, he tossed the ticket on his dresser and didn’t think about it until the Sunday morning after the draw. When he remembered it, he checked the Powerball numbers and they matched one of the sets of numbers on the botched ticket.

The couple, who work at a plant building seats for Toyotas, said they said they would like to go back to school and study finance.